joining us tonight to take this a bit further is dr
Margaret Blaustein, she's a clinical psychologist and
the founder director of the center for trauma training.
Dr Blaustein, thank you for being here if people are
watching this and wondering, ok what are the signs I
can watch for of a child may be being abused, What are
they typically, you know, it's it's such a hard
question to answer because trauma doesn't look like
just one thing. And so, you know, I always say trauma
in some ways is really an invisible pandemic right We
talk about trauma and abuse with big incidents, but it
happens I think most often silently uh in homes and in
communities and I never want people to overly read into
things that they see. Um but certainly if you work with
Children and you work with kids who struggle uh with
big emotions or big behaviors, I would never want to
assume abuse. Right That's that's I think something
that we want to be careful about, but always sort
assume that behavior comes from somewhere that emotions
have a reason. And so, you know, if I'm working with
with schools with classrooms with child care centers to
say if you have a child who's really struggling,
don't assume that the child is doing it just to push
your buttons, but that something may be going on
underneath and really to think in terms of support
needs rather than investigation right, For most of us,
our role is not investigation in the day to day. It's
how do I best support this child and family hearing
that a child is being hurt in any way. Uh, it makes you
sick. You know, a lot of people think I'm gonna go take
care of this myself. But as you said, we are not the
investigators. So how can we help Because foster care D
C F P C P s, there are lots of good people in ther
but there are also a lot of issues and people get
really skittish about steering child that way. If we
want to help. What is the best way Yeah, it's a great,
it's a great question. And I think the starting point,
as long as it's safe to do so is to be a relational
support to be a relational support to the child if
you're in relationship with the uh, to give kids a
safe space to be so to be safe and you know, for a
child to, to disclose abuse for instance, they have to
typically have some degree of relational safety with
the person that they're speaking to, right And so
that's a starting point, but also to reach out to
families when possible and to offer support to them. I
really love when schools or childcare centers have
outreach programs for parents because so often, you
know, we, we sort of have this idea that there's, yo
know, the good child and the terrible caregivers of the
bad people who are doing bad things most often and what
we have are stress systems, right We have stress
systems in which we have caregivers who are doing the
best they can often with very limited resources, of
in an experience in which they have themselves
experienced stress and systems of care and stress in
their own families and stress in their own communities
And we're often looking at a lot of layers of stress
here. And so the more that we can build up support
resources, right, the better th we can do, not just
for the child, but for their caregiving system. If we
confess forward many years, dr Blaustein, if someone is
hearing this and thinking, I experienced verbal or
physical or emotional abuse as a kid, it's never quite
resolved. How do you go about dealing with it as an
adult Yeah, it's it's a great mission and the truth is
right. Just given the statistics and given the number
abuse isn't rare, right Childhood trauma isn't
something that's uncommon. Uh so a decent percentage of
people in any group watching this will have themsel
experienced abuse or trauma in childhood. Uh and I
think that for a start to really give yourself
permission to feel what you feel, to know that there is
no right or wrong way to cope and metabolize. There's
no straight line, right It's very common for people to
have gotten through one phase of their life where they
feel like I've got this down, right I know who I am, I
know what I want to do, I'm doing fine and then
something new happens, you have your own Children or
you have a new experience and old thoughts and feelings
get really kicked up, I think, reaching out for
supports, whether that's through professional mental
health supports through pure groups, through spiritual
counselors, there's a lot of resources out there uh
tending to your body, trauma leaves a mark on our
bodies, it has a physiological impact. The exper
of trauma has a deep imprint on our body sense of
safety in the world. And so the more we contend to
building that sense of physiological safety, things
like, you know, doing things that are active or you
know, things like yoga exercise or other types of
things that help our bodies to feel better can be
important and staying connected to people. Dr, Margaret
Blaustein, thank you so much. I love what you said
about that if you circle back to dealing with this in
the future, that does not mean you're a failure or you
didn't do it before, you're just dealing with it in a
new way. I think that's great advice. Thank you so much
of course, thank you for having me and for talking
about this important subject